


blood on your face, blood in my eyes

by Stultiloquentia



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17545901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stultiloquentia/pseuds/Stultiloquentia
Summary: He'd bet his li—well, not his life, let's not get carried away ... he'd bet his favourite hoodie he has seen the mirror image of Tater's soulmark.





	blood on your face, blood in my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this tiny angsty snippet! Title from [The Origin of Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul-OGEKldoI).

For people who spend a lot of time naked in locker rooms, surrounded by nosy reporters, idolized by a lusty fanbase, or all of the above, keeping one's soulmark covered with a patch is standard. Even the married guys on the Falcs, even Thirdy, whom Jack knows is bonded with his wife, are oddly prim. Thirdy's custom order matches his skin tone, save for the simple anniversary date that arches discreetly over his biceps, just big enough to cover the true shape of his mark. Jack's own patch is plain for now, while Bits is in school, but he likes Thirdy's style.

The locker room is all but cleared out, the press gone, most of the guys hurrying home to enjoy a rare day off. Jack and Tater are the stragglers, and out comes Tater from the shower, impatiently peeling the waterlogged bandage from the crease between his hip and thigh. "Bleh, so awkward," he grouses, followed by a string of muttered Russian peevery. Stark naked, he stalks across the floor to shake his patch into the trash. Jack, for whom locker room etiquette has been second nature since he was six years old, really doesn't mean to stare. 

But he'd bet his li—well, not his life, let's not get carried away ... he'd bet his favourite hoodie he has seen the mirror image of Tater's soulmark.

He goes home and tries to sleep. Wakes from hazy erotic dreams of that other pale, muscled thigh under his hands, under his mouth. Teenaged fumblings and too-bright eyes and voices trying not to crack around stupid, breathless promises of, _it's not like it matters. it's not like it'll ever matter. you're what matters._ At 1 a.m. he winds up cautiously stalking an Instagram titled @90problems full of artsy cat pictures. Stumbles across a photo of Kit in a cat-sized jersey with a rainbow Pride Week towel draped around her neck. 

Kent Parson is so far in the closet he's broken through the priest hole, fled through the tunnel into the woods, and circled back around to the front door, decked out like an ally.

Tater, meanwhile, adores Bitty and seems perfectly comfortable with other people of all sexual orientations, but has never so much as hinted to Jack that he himself is otherwise than straight. Is he ... mostly straight? Circumspect because Russia? Could his connection to Kent be platonic? Jack has trouble imagining that; Kent is an intensely sexual being, so far as he recalls. 

What on _earth_ is he to do?


End file.
